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  "description": "For The Country",
  "path": "/nnh-america/",
  "publishedAt": "2025-10-06T23:09:31.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.wonderfell.org",
  "tags": [
    "New-New Hampshire",
    "Ms. Information",
    "Hello, Hamilton!",
    "The 51st State",
    "All of Her Poetry, Still",
    "She Knows",
    "Happy Dancing",
    "Black Tar Gone Gray",
    "A Poet Knows a Poet",
    "Fire Dancing Freedom’s Fire",
    "Prescott Park",
    "Ooh-la! Moo-la! Hooray!",
    "The Downloaded Dream Deferred",
    "Frost's Shooting Range",
    "Good Neighbor, Frost",
    "Too Many Old Glory & NRA Bumper Stickers",
    "Giant",
    "Binary Poetic",
    "Country Eyes",
    "It Is What It Is",
    "She's Afraid to Hope"
  ],
  "textContent": "### New-New Hampshire\n\n_I sing my songs in quiet lonely rooms,\nWhile fed-up unapologetic looms in each street..._\n\nA pharmaceutical salesman from California said:\n\"You can buy this same dose,\n(this exact same pill)\nFor 100, 200, 300% less in another Country.\"\n\nI told him:\n\"A Nation that advertises medicine is always sick.\"\n\nMy poetry was wasted on his bottom-line mind.\nHis wares wasted on me.\n\nWords are my nectar,\nAmbrosia, Olympus in a cup.\n\nIf what the salesman with the Pacific seaside tan says is true,\n(can we ever trust a salesman or elect one President?)\nI'll order the balm online directly from Greece.\n\nDepending on the tariffs\nA round trip flight may be more economical.\n\nCatch a classical Tragedy in Athens.\nGood for your health and wallet.\n\nHeard an audio visual tech representative from New York\n(the City and the State)\nBlare his sound systems made him a fortune.\n\nHe hipped and hopped:\n\"The subwoofers might as well be seismic gold.\"\n\nI told him:\n\"The trouble with treble is it prefers quiet introspective mettle.\"\n\nHe didn't hear me. How could he?\nWhy would he, with bass so seismically oversized?\n\nOnline shoppers in all of America say the World\nIs full of mountains, lakes, and seaside shores.\n\nThey say:\n\"Many vacation destinations are five-star review worthy.\"\n\nPresently I'm living in New Hampshire;\n\nEnjoying all of them,\nRather than bothering to write a five-star review.\n\n* * *\n\n### Ms. Information\n\nAmerica the Beautiful;\nDepends where you’re standing.\n\nGod bless the U.S.;\nDepends which one.\n\nFrom sea to shining sea;\nDepends on the latest oil spill.\n\nOil burns bright, so do wildfires.\nThe torch on Ellis Island was never lit.\n\nProbably why she turned green, got sick from the cold,\nOr ate something that turned her stomach.\n\nBad French Fries, maybe.\nCall ‘em  _frites_ over there.\n\nA little redundant calling them  _Français Frites_.\n\nThough, sometimes a patriotic adjective is helpful.\nThere’s splendor, then there’s American Splendor.\n\nA work of literature or...\n\nMaybe, metaphorically, a poetic name\nFor Lady Liberty’s torch...\n\nIf we could only light it.\n\nBut, then, perhaps it would be French Splendor,\nAs she was a gift from France.\n\nSo, Liberty is a French woman with cleanly shaven armpits,\nStanding on an island in New York with an impotent torch,\nAnd some book Napoleon used to stand on to address his armies.\n\nHe was short.\nLittle man syndrome.\n\nDefinitely not as tall as the woman who holds the book\nSent over to give us our impotent torch of liberty.\n\nCopper goes green behind the ears after a while, evidently.\nFrench Fries go green if you don’t peel them or cook them enough.\n\nA slightly copper colored fry is best.\nSlightly crisped on the outside to protect the soft white center.\n\nSometimes a bruised potato shows up and the fry turns black,\nDeflates a bit, and can’t protect the soft white center.\n\nIt holds nothing of presupposed value being black and blue\nBefore it had a chance to cook to the right temperature.\n\nMight as well hold a bruised French Fry over Liberty’s impotent torch\nAnd try to make it of nutritional value to the American eating it.\n\nMaybe raise the nutritional bar...\n\nThey only eat  _Frites_ in France where\nBruised done right is for a five-star gourmet soiree.\n\nThey call Paris the City of Love, but ‘Eiffel’ is not something you want\nThe world’s most notorious phallic symbol saying on a honeymoon night.\n\nQuite an awful thing to hear your tower sing:\n\n_‘Oui, oui, Eiffel!’_\nOn your honeymoon.\n\n_Oui! Oui!_ for Lady Liberty’s impotent torch.\nGreen obscene  _frites_ for treats on Coney Island\n\nSounds fair real newsie to me.\n\nLet Freedom’s Onion ring for your attention!\nCracked Liberty Bell peppers and all.\n\n* * *\n\n### Hello, Hamilton!\n\nThere’s that story again. The same one we were talking about the other day. Remember?\n\nThe one that had you tapping on the glass like it was a tambourine and the jokes you made regarding the weather and drug addicts and homeless people.\n\nDid they know how to swim because the rain was coming down in buckets, so there was nothing to hold-out to fill with handouts?\n\nYou laughed over that. Saw it on The News.\n\nNot The News but someone talking about The News after The News.\n\nAnd didn’t see it. Heard it. On a podcast.\n\nA podcast on political values and how the world is going to shit and how it’s not even safe to drive your car out of the supermarket parking lot without someone in a face mask holding out a bucket made in China for you to throw in a George, or an Abe, or a Hello! Made His Week Hamilton.\n\nMaybe he ought to start a patriotic bucket factory, The Fuck It Make a Buck Make a Bucket Factory.\n\nAssembly line workers in Spangled Red, White, and Blue uniforms. Clean Diesel pumping through the air. Double Minimum wage for all!\n\nLocal buckets are twice as much now and that times three. But we all have jobs, mostly. And overpriced buckets with nothing but stuff and junk and extra to put in The Made with Pride Right Here in the USA Empty Containers.\n\nEnough room for a small trash can for the backseat floor. Something to toss your face mask into on your way home from the supermarket.\n\nNo longer buckets for uncomfortable stop lights. Buckets are too expensive for a hobo to steal. Besides, a hobo's bucket is not a safe bucket when it’s an expensive one.\n\nNot a long for life hobo that peddles at a stop light full of hungry shoppers looking for somewhere safe to dispose of their disposable masks with a too expensive Made with Pride Right Here in the USA Empty Bucket.\n\nMaybe a straight from the bank drive up I-pay QR SKU NFC scanner for bucket-less street corner hobos.\n\nNo one carries loose change these days.\n\nGeorge and Abe and Hello Hamiltons are too dirty and too maybe infected.\n\nToss them in the can on the backseat floor with the used masks.\n\nCash is King, after all.\n\n* * *\n\n### The 51st State\n\nWe these people, gas-masked, can't breathe,\nFaces to the curb, choked out by that other\nStill on about that Mr. Monochrome Maniacal:\n\nOther Brother.\n\nThis body. This skin, I'm in.\nHeard the Science Man Say:\nThat's not the same one you wore just yesterday.\n\nSnowflakes and Skins have no twins.\n\nIn so many years gone by,\nSo many tears gone by,\n\nYou're a whole new you.\n\nRead it right that's true.\nWhich Yesterday's Particle are you?\nWhat graft grafted your You?\n\nWhat piece of You did America bring You?\n\nEvery atom of Walt's grass still belongs to Me-belongs to You.\nEvery shoot shot new from Gettysburg's field that's You,\nThat's Me, too.\n\nThe 51st State, Unstated:\n\nThe heart pumps the prism, pumps the shade.\nThe heart bleeds every color in America.\nThe grass at Gettysburg is stained with bloody rainbows.\n\nThe leaves are Black and White thirsty.\nThe brown earth runs raw the spectrum.\nThe blood battle bespangled.\n\nThe battle beats the Mississippi!\nRun Blood, Corre! Colored Blood, Corre!\nRun Rainbow Blood! Run American Blood!\n\nLap up yesterday's bleed. Take Account!\nLap up the bled bedecked Bunker -no- Breed's Hill.\nLap up the insincerity in the Courthouse in Appomattox.\n\nKiss your own Black ass, your own White shit.\nKiss the great every color bloodstained leaf of grass.\nKiss your bought and sold two shade-soul.\n\nThe 51st State, Poetically, Unstated:\n\nEvil never loses but lurks.\nA battle won is done undone\nBy silent convenience.\n\nAmerica still belongs to you, America.\nBut your way still marks in twain.\n\nSo single it out.\n\nThat:\nThe cause of every American Hell,\nIs the cleft cut in Liberty's Bell.\n\nThe 51st State, Stated:\n\n_In America:_\nThere is too much Black.\nThere is too much**** White.\nAnd there is not enough Color.\n\n* * *\n\n### All of Her Poetry, Still\n\nI didn’t know Mary was dead.\n(No one told me about Maya, either) A blank\nPause when I read about it online.\n\nPoets don’t go out when we die.\n(We live with Death while we live.)\nWe stay home.\n\nWhich is why when Walt said to me\n(The other day)\nThat to die is luckier than I suppose,\n\nI believed him.\n\n* * *\n\n### She Knows\n\nShe knows she’s going to die.\nThe way she watches her grandson,\nReads every word as joy.\nShe knows the numbers,\nHe’s learning to count backward,\nOnly go forward.\n\nShe’s smiling easy ruby ready,\nCheeked checking out,\nThe way he smiles\nWhen he knows she’s smiling\nBecause she knows something\nHe’s just learned.\n\n* * *\n\n### Happy Dancing\n\nYou did dizzy.\nThen spun around\nIn mind and dream\nLike you do in this chair.\n\nLike you as a toddler\nYour spin dance\nIn the center of the kitchen,\n\nHead back,\nEyes on ceiling fan,\nIn twirls,\n\n“I’m happy now!\nI’m Dancing!\nI’m Dancing, now!\nI’m Happy! I’m Dancing!”\n\nHope he remembers\nThe joy of dizzy dances\nUnder a ceiling fan,\n\nThe whole wearied whirl\nAround world watched\nAnd wondered while you spun\n\nHappiness was\nAs easy as\nHappiness is\nIn an unwearied world.\n\n* * *\n\n### Black Tar Gone Gray\n\nthin blue chalk line up on black tar\ngone gray called concrete curbs\nset -not reset- since The Great Depression.\n\nwhere old weeds\nthe same weeds\nnew weeds grow\n\nsometimes, though  _sometimes_\na dandelion grows, too\nsometimes, though  _sometimes_\n\na kid picks it up -plucks it up-\nblows the parachute cotton-\npicked soft seeds to the wind\n\nsometimes-  _so few times_\nfloat to full wishes fulfilled\nsometimes- so  _many sometimes_\n\nno wind on never fall flowers, but turn flat\nand press down yesterday’s gray concrete\nbought old sold older worthless oldest\n\nwindless without reason why pick up\npluck up a weed and dream it something\nsome wonderful some-any-thing new\n\nhopes choke on dead dandelion parachute cords\ntethered to hot black tar gone gray called concrete\nset -not reset- since the Great Depression.\n\n* * *\n\n### A Poet Knows a Poet\n\n_Then I remember America's poets._\n\nWe have this thing, America's poets do.\nMaya taught me that. We share it.\n\nShe read Edgar Allan Poe and called him EAP (rhymes with creep).\nMaya told me, see?\n\nAfter the first line of hers I ever read, she was Maya, Emily, Langston, and Emerson.\n\nHank Thoreau called him  _Nature Loving Wally_ , Boston's original Green Monster.\n\nFirst names. Nicknames. Instant friends. Kindred spirits.\n\nA poet knows a poet the same way we know poetry; we let ourselves.\n\nWe surrender to what we are: The great manic steady stream called life.\n\nWe are not Hallmark Cards. We are tougher than adamantium steel.\n\nWe write the day.\nWe stay the tide.\nWe steady our ride.\nWe notice.\nWe take notes.\n\nWe live our lives in the eye of the storm.\n\nA warrior poet?\nIs there any other kind?\n\n* * *\n\n### Fire Dancing Freedom’s Fire\n\n_For,\nMaya\nAngel-\nOh!_\n\n**_Singed_** , while her house\nWent up in ** _smoke_**.\nWhile her neighbors,\n**-numbed and dutiful-**\n_-drummed the usual-_\n**Clutched their masks**\n _To cough in an elbow._\n\nIn this ** _suffocation:_**\n\n_Low_ never knew **Low** ,\n_**-And-**\nDark_ never knew **Dark\n _-And-_\nHell **was a  _thing_ that **chilled** ,\nWhile words never knew\n**Their**  _names_.\n\n-So She-\n\n_Showed them_ - **told them,\nShowed them-**  _**and** told them_,\n**Showed**  _them_ -_**and** told_ **them** ,\n**_Their_** names.\n\n_-Now-_\n\n**Good News is Good News!**\n\n**_Light_** is Light!\n**_-And-\nJoy _**is Joy!\n\n**_-And-_**\n\n**Boy! Oh, Boy!**\n\n**_This Soul_** ,\nIs: This Soul,\nThat’s met,\n**_Joy_** , who is\n\n**Joy!**\n\n_And the fire burns._\n**And the fire warms.\n_And the soul’s name_** ,\nIs spoke with Freedom.\n\n* * *\n\n### Prescott Park\n\nPeople stop to smell the flowers in gas masks.\n\nI wonder who keeps the Mayflowers at Prescott Park,\nWonder who keeps the Marigolds on Marcy Street.\n\nI wonder at the Mayflowers at Prescott Park,\nWonder how they stay and go year to year.\n\nI wonder of Plymouth down the coast,\nWonder of Mayflower landings to our land.\n\nThis Land.\n\n_\"A rock don't do much; don't grow.\"\nA mouth-masked kid said._\n\nHow many Mayflowers drift into Prescott Park?\nHow many wind glide and set down seeds each new May?\n\nI wonder how many minutes and myths make a Plymouth rock grow.\nWonder if the scent and sense of flowers in May can ring memories\n\nThrough blue masks, of the scented and sensible ways\nOf Marigolds and Mayflowers, in May, on Marcy Street.\n\n* * *\n\n### Ooh-la! Moo-la! Hooray!\n\nDrugs\n!\nMoney\n!\nWomen\n!\n\nHip-Hop\n,\nOoh la\n!\n\nHip-Hop\n,\nMoo-la\n!\n\nHip-Hop\n,\nHip-Hop\n,\nHooray\n!\n\nIs there any better way\n,\nTo spend each day with\n,\nTo spend and play with\n,\n\nDrugs\n,\nAnd Money\n,\nAnd Women\n?\n\nThe Ooh-La\n.\nThe Moo-la\n.\n\nThe Hip-Hop\n,\nHip-Hop\n,\nHooray\n!\n\nWhat a day\n!\nWhat’s that you say\n?\n\nDrugs\n!\nMoney\n!\nWomen\n!\n\nHip\n,\nHop\n,\n\nOoh-la\n,\nMoo-la\n,\n\nHip-Hop\n,\nHip-Hop\n,\n\nHooray\n.\n\n* * *\n\n### The Downloaded Dream Deferred\n\nBut I can’t America;\nI can’t make you Great again,\nBecause you never were.\n\nGreat is finished good;\nGreatest is finished great.\nYou are not finished, America.\n\nYou are a living document.\nTherefore you breathe;\nTherefore you grow.\n\nMake America Greater Again!\nForward, everyday. Greater Everyday.\nThe Never-done, The Greater-Again.\n\nBut the Dream Langston!\nThe dream deferred conferred\nWith the downloaded dream deferred.\n\n_The Dream Deferred (1)\nThe Dream Deferred (2)\nThe Dream Deferred (3)_\n\nDownloading…\nStill…More…Of…\nThe Dream Deferred.\n\nCopies… The Great gone dead.\nMake America Great Again,\nMakes America Dead.\n\n_Dead does not make Dead Again._\n\nLangston,\nThe Dream did not explode:\n_It started (to terminate) with a political bang,\nAnd ended (to restart) with an Artificially Intelligent whimper._\n\n* * *\n\n### Frost's Shooting Range\n\nRode around Frost's farm.\nWindows are boarded white.\nClosed sign. Historic landmark.\n\nThe grass out back is mowed to look like a shooting range.\nHard to see the birch trees through all the saplings,\nShot up young since Route 28 was paved over.\n\nSomething about honor and profession and the poet Frost,\nAnd his swinging trees colored over with brittle pines\nTo keep the scenic route of a poet looking scenic.\n\nA skyscraper touched a sequoia\nWith a certain kind of light\nIn a certain kind of eye.\n\n* * *\n\n### Good Neighbor, Frost\n\nIf the sky and the horizon bent properly,\nI could see those paper barked birches.\n\nAutumn -swung and knocked- swung and knocked\nOak and ash and spruce and pine and even\n\nEvergreens\nGrumbled.\n\nFat chirping squirrels bent trunks down.\nElasticity whip snapped shot them back up.\n\nI crooked my neck waiting for the dome of Heaven to burst.\nHome ten miles south of mine watching for Frost on the birch branches,\n\nTo shatter coke bottle pieces on the bracken of autumn wet.\nMy whole young life long waiting for you to crash back down,\n\nBack home;\nYou never did.\n\nYou must have found a better place for love.\nYou must have found a better place for love.\n\n* * *\n\n### Too Many Old Glory & NRA Bumper Stickers\n\nHe has:\nToo many NRA bumper stickers-\nToo many Old Glory bumper stickers-\n\nIn a quilted firearm and flag frame\nPressed without wrinkle around\nThe rusted rear Chassis of his\n20-year-old Chevy 2500\n\nHe has:\nToo many separate-\nToo many pieced-\n\nIn a quilted firearm\nAnd flag frame around\nHis new tailgate with\nstenciled perfect letters:\n\n> **STOP Bullying.**\n\nThen below that-\nSpelled with stickers-\nUsed on front doors-\nAnd mailboxes-\n\nCapital letters\nExecuted as\nExpected:\n\nThe Birth-day.\nThe Death-day.\n\nThe First-name.\nThe Last-name.\n\nEven-\n\nThe Middle of his\n12-year-old son.\n\n* * *\n\n### Giant\n\nThere’s a peacock sounding race relations.\nThere’s a fox snarling this and that amendment issues.\n\nThere’s an angry man, not really angry, playing angry\nFor your angry pleasure, on the AM dial,\nAll not-really-riled up-riled, rolling in his not-at-all-angry dough.\n\nThere’s a housing shortage in the neighborhood of the last school shooting.\nThere’s good people in blue and good people in red blood on the streets.\nThere’s medicine and there’s insurance.\n\nAnd there’s the bank. The Bank.\nAnd there’s a loan where the front door used to go.\nAnd there’s a rainbow and there’s the way over it.\n\nNow, we’re talking.\nAnd now, I’m talking about living in and out of a white cardboard box.\nSo now he’s talking about a white-cardboard-Banker’s-Box-box.\n\nThe man wants metaphors.\nBut I don’t want a metaphor,\nI want out of this cardboard box.\n\n“That’s quite a cardboard box you’ve got there,”\nHe says to me from his perfectly good not cardboard,\nWhite-cardboard-Banker’s-Box-box.\n\nSo, we’re healing.\nSo, we’re doing what we would not do.\n\nWe’re being who we were afraid to be.\nFinally.\n\nBut we’re afraid of it.\nBut we ought not be.\n\nBecause we’re already what and who we need to be to do the thing.\nIt’s just a matter of doing it.\n\nSo, the only thing in our way is yesterday.\nBut that was yesterday.\n\nSo, we don’t know\nWhat’s in our way.\n\nBut I do.\n\nIt’s today.\nIt’s this  _Right Now_.\n\nWe spin against it.\nWe crash against it.\n\nWe wham.\nWe bang.\nWe boom.\n\nBoom against the doom,\nThat’s not in the room.\n\nBut We\nMust win.\n\nSo We\nDo win.\n\nOne win\nAt a time.\n\nSo…\n\nI am a giant and a giant killer.\nI am the mountain and the moon.\n\nI smash it down.\nI raise it up.\nI sculpt it\n\nInto\nSomething\nBeautiful.\n\n* * *\n\n### Binary Poetic\n\n**One**\n\nPen-Brushed-Bristled-Bulldozers\nShe’s got this.\n\nPoetry of Power.\nPower Poetry.\n\nThe Poetry of Women in the new millennium.\n\nMighty metaphor.\nSuper simile.\n\nSubject what\nSubject you will:\n\nDog. Apple.\nCat. Zucchini.\n\nRace. Hate. Crime.\nBirth. Motherhood.\n\nPoetry of Power.\nPower Poetry.\n\nThe Poetry of Women in the new millennium.\n\nPush down the canvas.\nEat expression- Poetry.\n\nTake it!\n\nPunch down the poem.\nSignify this- Poetry.\n\nLike it!\n\nWhat’s Poetry gonna do about it?\nWhat’s Poetry gonna say about it?\n\n_Whatever she tells it to._\n\nPower Poetry of Women in the new millennium.\n_Even zucchinis are up for grabs._\n\nBulldoze-Brushed-Beatific to the floor.\n\nKick its ass- then step on it.\nMake the metaphors go soprano.\n\n**Zero**\n\nThe good men today are all shamed, ashamed\nOf yesterday, when they weren’t here to do anything shameful.\n\nThe good men today are all missed, remiss\nAbout yesterday, when they weren’t here to be missed for.\n\nThe good men today, mourn for this day, when they were here today\nMissed, but remiss, because they were filled with shame.\n\nThe good men today have nothing\nBut everything to say and can’t say it.\n\nGreat-Great-Grandpa left good men with impotent ink.\n\n* * *\n\n### Country Eyes\n\n_The first Saturday morning in October at Massabesic Lake._\nThe world is in masks. The trees are in technicolor.\n\nAutumn in New England, when Mother Nature\nReminds the Country what color really is.\n\nAutumn foliage season begins in New Hampshire.\nThe eyes only see 4k desktop wallpapers.\n\nProfessional photographers.\nJapanese family vacation photographers.\nLesbian couple on park bench for breakfast photographers.\n\n* * *\n\n### It Is What It Is\n\nWe feel so uncomfortable\nSaying the word soul.\n\nIn the morning:\n\nWe dress\nOur children for school.\n\nThen march\nThem off to war.\n\nIn rooms:\n\nFull of\nSemi-automatic clouds of chalk.\n\nFull of\nThe lingering smell of pencils.\n\nAnd tomorrow:\n\nTake an eraser\nTo a predictably bloodied world.\n\nWe feel so uncomfortable\nSaying the word soul.\n\n* * *\n\n### She's Afraid to Hope\n\nShe's afraid to hope.\nThe spider in my window;\nShe's afraid of hope.\n\nBlack Widow Beautiful\nAnd she (yes, she!) is\nAfraid to hope.\n\nCould it be this time,\n(Yes, This Time!) the grass\n(Yes, This Grass!) is actual\n\n(In fact, actual!) green.\nActual factual Green.\nGracious grass green!\n\nBlack widow spider\n(What a heart!)\n(What power!)\n\nIn my Window\nEyes on green\n\nActual (In fact)\nFactual green\n\nStill afraid to hope,\nAfraid of hope.",
  "title": "New-New Hampshire: America",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-08T21:04:15.269Z"
}